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Haunted Flint

Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Taking the Bait by Audrey Noire

Hey there! My name is
Audrey Noire, and I write a romance novels and romantic erotica, usually in the
paranormal genre but I'll take on any idea wandering through my head that has a
strong and quirky heroine and a red-hot lead male with a soft heart.

Here's a cheerful
little epilogue I wrote for superhero romance novella Taking the Bait
that didn't quite make it to the final edit. I'm an absolute sucker for a
sweet-on-the-inside lead male, and I wanted to show Nicolai's smitten, gooey
marshmallow center. Enjoy!

~*~

Nicolai was a
terrible cook. Daria knew it, and he knew that she knew it. What he didn't know
was that she was well aware the pancakes he'd bring her in bed weren't of his
own making. McDonald's was only a few blocks away, and he was fast enough to
get there and back without breaking a sweat, and without letting a fresh order
of hotcakes cool down.

Well, Daria was happy
to let him keep his secret, because she had a soft-spot for McDonald's pancakes
and their hash-browns were a total guilty-pleasure. Plus it was never a bad
thing when Nic crawled up the bed, shirtless, a wooden tray in his hand laden
with an artfully plated fast-food breakfast feast. The man, ridiculous and
handsome at the same time, had poured the pancake syrup into a small creamer
that morning, to further the illusion of a home-cooked meal.

“Mmmm, and I bet you
did the dishes too,” she said in a teasing voice, pulling the tray onto her lap
as she sat up in bed. She went to reach for the fork, but Nicolai's hand
blurred and then beat her to it, slicing into the fluffy hotcake for her and
holding it to her lips. She tried not to roll her eyes. “I can feed myself,”
she said, but took the mouthful anyway.

Nicolai just smiled,
shaking his bangs out of his face before shifting up beside her so he could
hand her the fork.

“Yes you can,” he
said, his voice a low gravel that sparked a shiver of heat up her spine, “and
now that my hands are free, I can busy them with other tasks, Mila.”

~*~

I hope you enjoyed
that, and thanks so much for reading! If you liked this, give me a shout on
social media, I love keeping in touch with wonderful new people.

- Aud

Taking the Bait

Arc Operatives

Book One

Audrey Noire

Genre: Romance Sci-Fi/Superhero

Date of Publication: May 6, 2016

ASIN: B01EMABWEQ

Number of pages: 43

Word Count: 12,817

Cover Artist: Avery Knott

Book Description:

Daria Griffin is a newly-minted undercover operative with ARC, on a mission with her partner. Nicolai Novik an augmented human with super-fast speed. Their first job? Infiltrate a conference of billionaires as a newly-wed couple and dig up the dirt on shady business dealings.

Daria's the bait, tasked with luring in businessmen with her unhappy-trophy-wife routine while Nicolai talks shop. But the operation goes all wrong when Nicolai starts acting strangely in the middle of it. Will they be discovered by forces who may not have their best interests at heart? And why is Nicolai acting so possessive of Daria when he never said more than a few words to her during training?

Part one of a three-part romance story in The ARC Operatives series!

Author's Note: Taking the Bait is a 12,000-word novella. No cliffhanger, HFN ending. Due to strong language and sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18. The first scene from it's sequel is included as a bonus at the end of the book!

“You want my
first mission to have me pretending to be what?!” Daria Griffin gripped the
side of her chair as she stared at her boss, and then looked back down at the
dossier open in front of her on the desk. She wrinkled up her nose and tried
not to make a noise of distress as she wondered if she was really ready for
something that required that level of acting skill. Daria had never been
particularly confident in her own appearance on a good day, let alone having to
pretend to be a trophy wife while undercover (although damn had she day-dreamed
of being swept off her feet by billionaire-du-jour when reading those frequent
eligible bachelor articles). She shot a look over at her future-partner.

Nicolai Novik’s
expression was deadpan, unreadable, and a little unnerving. He was eyeing up
his dossier, gaze flicking back and forth over the paper and profiles within
it. He ran a hand through his dirty-blond hair and sighed, long and low. At
least because English was his second language he wasn’t super-fast at reading
it, since he was super-fast at pretty much everything else (including getting
into the pants of the receptionists and assistants that were running all over
ARC’s offices, holy wow had he burnt through ladies like Daria’d gone through
funny-shaped erasers in elementary school).

There was
nothing like a team made up of a nearly-dead-half-recovered ARC operative and a
nameless ARC former-intern to do an undercover mission at a billionaire
business convention, right? At least, Daria hoped there would be nothing like
them and they wouldn’t fail and go down in a hail of bullets. Even over a year
of training to be an undercover operative hadn’t exactly boosted her
self-confidence, especially since in quite a few of her courses she’d only
passed with middling grades.

She thought back
to before she’d begun down the path towards super-secret spy work. Her
supervisors had plucked her out of her internship in the labs as the ink was
still drying on her degree. She’d been hustled off (‘transferred’ was the
official word for it) from her tiny job paper-chasing after a kind but
generally hapless bio-engineering scientist named Dr. Robert Fowler, and put
through a series of rigorous tests designed to ‘assess her skills and talents’.

During the testing
process there’d been no coffee-fetching test, and definitely no pop-quiz on how
to scoop up great thrift-store finds. Daria had figured she’d failed miserably
and would have to do the workplace walk-of-shame back to her old boss down in
Lab #3b, continue her internship and hope for a good letter of recommendation
from him. Not that she would have minded… Robert had been the laid-back kinda
boss-guy, and she’d liked working with him even if the hours were kinda wonky.

To her great
surprise though she’d passed the tests she’d been given. When she’d looked down
at her acceptance and new employment contract with astonishment, Anastasia
Rykov, the operative administering the majority of the testing had just raised
one perfectly groomed eyebrow and said,

“What, you think
ARC picks fools for interns? You were groomed for this from the start.”

About the Author:

Audrey Noire grew up in the pacific north west, climbing trees and swimming in the sea. She spent her formative young adult years travelling the globe alongside her musician husband as he toured and played across Europe, North America, and parts of Asia.

They’ve settled down (sorta kinda) with a bundle of cats in a sea-side town. When she’s not on the road watching her rocker husband from side-stage, she’s writing about handsome gents and lovely ladies falling for one another.

She believes that every day is ripe with possibilities, and that life is precious. Don’t waste a second – fall in love with your life all over again!